First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix

Texas Pan American Literature in Translation

by Regina Rheda, Adria Frizzi (Editor), REYoung (Editor)

Regina Rheda is a contemporary award-winning Brazilian writer whose original voice and style have won her many admirers. First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix presents some of her finest and most representative work to an English-speaking readership. Stories from the Copan Building consists of eight tales set in a famous residential building in São Paulo. The stories, like the apartment complex, are a microcosm of modern-day urban Brazil. They are witty, consistently caustic, and never predictable.

Also in this volume is the poignant and often hilarious novel First World Third Class. It depicts young middle-class professionals and artists who, as opportunities in Brazil diminished, opted to leave their country, even if it meant taking menial jobs abroad. At the center of the narrative is Rita, a thirty-year-old aspiring filmmaker who migrates to England, and then Italy. She looks for work and love in all the wrong places, moving from city to city and from bed to bed.

The last three stories in this collection also happen to be among the author's most recent. "The Enchanted Princess" is an ironic title for a postfeminist tale of a South American woman being wooed to marry an old-world gentleman who promises to take care of her every need. "The Sanctuary" concerns the living conditions of immigrant workers and farm animals. Equally piquant in nature, "The Front" deals with ecology, labor environments, and gender politics.

277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

Regina Rheda was born in Brazil and has been living in the US since 1999. She studied cinema in college and made award-winning short films before discovering a vocation for literary fiction. In 1995 she earned the most important award for Brazilian literature, The Jabuti. She is known for her prose fiction concerning urbanism, transnational migration, and animal rights. Analysts have underlined originality, wit and irony in Rheda's style. Her work has interested scholars of Inter-American literature, Latin American literature, literature of Brazil, women writers, post-humanism, ecocriticism, and veganism. In 2007, she started doing authorized translations of texts by lawyer and philosopher Gary L. Francione, whose animal rights approach has veganism as its fundamental principle. Besides translating Professor Francione's blog essays, Regina Rheda also translated his first book into Portuguese: Introdução aos direitos animais: seu filho ou o cachorro? (Editora da Unicamp, 2013).

Reviews

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i fell in love with this book. the short stories were truely wonderful and left you wishing the story would keep going. the longer story, first world third class was so amazing. you completely feel a connection to the protagonist. the themes in the book and brazilian life are great.

[Lisa Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't tell if this was hilarious, or really painful and depressing to read. "Watch a girl suffer for 160 pages."

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of short stories from a Brazilian author. The title story is a novella about a woman from Sao Paolo who moves to Europe, first England and then Italy.